Less Is More - Introduction

Introduction: Less Is More is classed as Marillion's 16th studio album, the twelfth of the Hogarth-era.

With the exception of It's Not Your Fault, Less Is More is an album of reworked material from previous albums, and consequently, only that one song has an explanation.

It would be fair to say that Less Is More is generally regarded somewhat disdainfully by a large section of the fanbase, who feel it is overworked and rarely successful. Personally, I feel the songs are, at worse, perfectly ok taken individually, but I don't feel it works well as an album. However, the versions of Wrapped Up In Time and Interior Lulu are both excellent.

It's Not Your Fault

'Secrets and lies'
Secrets and Lies is a film by Mike Leigh. A woman decides to trace her birth family and contact her mother. The film is about the effects of concealment and untruths on the people concerned.

'I broke a mirror'
The breaking of a mirror supposedly condemns the breaker to seven years of bad luck. This superstition goes back to the Romans, who first made mirrors. They believed that part of the soul was trapped in the mirror, and breaking the glass thus distorted or damaged the soul.

Happiness Is The Road - Introduction

Introduction:  Album fifteen is another double album, produced by the band & Mike Hunter. The first CD is a concept album entitled Essence.

Essence is partly based on ideas from a new age/self-help book recommended to Steve Hogarth during the Somewhere Else tour, called 'The Power of Now' by Eckhart Tolle and concerns the notion of embracing the moment rather than dwelling on the past or future.

Dreamy Street

'That monkey inside o'me Gone skulkin away'
A possible reference back to h's solo track The Evening Shadows and its opening line, 'I have an animal inside me'.

Other references to monkeys and apes exist on this album. Human beings, monkeys and apes all share a common ancestor, of course. Genetically, we may not have a monkey inside us, but we certainly share a lot of the same DNA!

This Train is my Life

'Distant lights from the wrong side of the tracks'
The wrong side of the tracks is a term meaning someone who comes from a bad or less prosperous part of town. The phrase arose because train tracks would often mark neighbourhood boundaries. It was often employed as a dog whistle for parts of town where black people lived.

Essence

'Choose life, Choose living'
Possibly intended as a parody of the famous speech by the character Renton in the book Trainspotting by Irving Welsh, especially given the previous line in the song, 'The book, the film, the faithful depiction'.

Wrapped up in Time

'Told backwards down this rod of light... ...Long extinct'
The stars in the night sky are light years away from us, meaning that by the time the photons have travelled from the star to our retinas, spans of time have passed. 

A light year is literally the distance light can travel in a year, so if you're looking at something a light year away, you are seeing how it looked one year ago when its photons were first emitted and started their journey through space to your eye.

Proxima Centuri, the closest star to Earth, is 4.7 light years away, meaning that when we look at it, we are seeing how it looked 4.7 years ago. No matter which star we look at, we are looking back in time, not seeing it as it is now.

Woke Up

'Woke up in a city that doesn’t sleep'
If Sinatra is to be believed, that would be New York City; a  quote from New York, New York.

Trap The Spark

'I've opened the box and I've touched the treasures of the earth'
A deliberate echo of the line from Genie on Marbles..?

'They're buried on the island far away'
A reference to the island from Fantastic Place on Marbles..?

Happiness Is The Road

Introduction: The lyrics to the song Happiness Is The Road were inspired by h's trip to a doctor in Utrecht when he was ill on the Somewhere Else Tour.

In an interview with  Sean Palmerston for Exclaim, h said, "During the Somewhere Else tour I was suffering with my health. It was self-induced really. I wasn't eating properly and was also under a lot of stress both within my domestic situation [recent divorce] and professionally [on tour]. My body eventually rebelled and although I won't go into gory details, I ended up needing surgery. I was referred to a doctor in Utrecht, Holland who performed a minor operation (on the afternoon of the Utrecht show!).